Selling PR6 website - Online since 1999 - Original Content

Good luck Gene with your endevour. I would be interested in seeing/reading how this turns out for you, there are a lot of nonsense comments here, and some great advice as well

 

If I may comment on a couple of points:
- if you're looking for $350K, you're in the wrong forum. Try a moniker domain auction or similiar, or the numerous other places listed here.
- I've sold websites in the range of what you're asking (not just asked the price, recieved it). You're still asking too much. You've got 'it's my baby syndrome', you need to approach this from the buyer's perspective.
- you do not have an established business for sale. You have a 'potential' business for sale. And that potential gets realized by the buyer, not you. If you want to make the money from the potential, develop it yourself. Then you can sell it based on current revenue. Otherwise, nobody is going to pay you for that. Thinking someone is going to pay you 'potential' is a common newbie mistake. In fact I don't think even established B&M businesses get paid out for 'potential'. That's for the buyer - that's WHY they're buying the site, to realize the potential.
- a three word, not overly keyword rich domain name in and of itself isn't worth much.
- you can't look at traffic over 4 years. This is the internet. Best case you could assume a year, BEST case. After that, Google's algo is too finicky. Try putting your click numbers over six months to a year, not four.
- If I have $350K to spend, is it cheaper to buy yours, or build it myself? I gotta believe, since your site doesn't have any particular branding, that for a small fraction of that amount I could easily buy a similiar website for $10K, drop $40K on a good SEO firm, and get everything that you've got.

Try rearranging your thinking to what the buyer is going to look at. For everything you're stating here, the person actually laying down the cash is going to object. And since they're paying the bill, you'd better be able to answer those questions in a convincing fashion. Certainly that's not being done so far.

And you might also consider looking at what other domains are selling for. There's a reason most websites sell at the 6-10 times monthly revenue, and I don't see yours having anything special enough to lift it out of that range. Again, potential doesn't do that. Branding does, you don't have that. Inability to penetrate the market does, you don't have that. Ownership of a community does, you don't have that.

Anyway, not trolling your thread, but my two cents on why you're expectations are too high. Don't worry, it's not uncommon for people with nice websites that do well to go down that road. First time I sold a website in the six figures (almost a decade ago) I quickly got an education in how this works.

 

And what kind of a dillweed hands out a red rep point for commenting negatively?

Ask yourself, how many websites have you bought and sold in this price range? I've done it multiple times, I'm guessing that makes my opinion in this thread reasonably valid. The ding dong hands out a red rep is likely a 18 year old making $8 a month on adsense.

Sorry, idiot. This is not a business for sale. It's a website. If it was an established brick and mortar business, then you can get into this type of multiples of income. But it's not. It's a website. And websites are valued differently than B&M businesses, despite some folks wishful thinking.

The fact is, it's making $X and without any mitigating factors, which this site doesn't have, it's only worth 6 to 12 times X. That's the way website businesses are sold.

It's not a 'real' business because it's built on Search engine traffic. And if you think someone's going to pay you huge multiples of some small amount of monthly income, when the entire website is built around SE traffic that can be duplicated elsewhere, you're dreaming or your 12 years old. People don't pay for vapourous dreams - like the assumption that good search engine traffic in the past means it's worth paying $350K and assume the SE traffic is guaranteed. The first thing out of a buyer's mouth will be the critique that the SE traffic isn't guaranteed - and they're not paying for it.

But that's fine, you can rationalize it however you like when you've never done deals like this before. I'm parrotting back things buyers have said to me when buying sites at that price level. Others are likely parroting back things they heard when they sold their directory site for $50.

 

$10k.

Bid expires 17 December, 2007.

 

I think we scared ipwatchdog away